Jordan Bell and Nick 'Swag Champ' Young went toe-to-toe for MVP of the Warriors' parade

Stephen Curry celebrated. Some of his teammates celebrated just a little harder. (Getty)

The race for 2018 NBA Finals MVP went down to the wire of Game 4 of the Golden State Warriors’ sweep of the Cleveland Cavaliers, with Kevin Durant’s dominant Game 3 and series-closing triple-double edging out Stephen Curry’s monster performances in Games 2 and 4 to grant Durant his second straight Bill Russell Trophy. And yet, somehow, the race for MVP of Tuesday’s Warriors championship parade might be even closer.

The central-casting selection for the J.R. Smith of this year’s festivities, Young — who had the line of the night (several of them, in fact) after the Warriors’ Game 4 win — showed up on Tuesday seemingly ready to borrow from former Dubs great Stephen Jackson’s playback by making love to the pressure of turning up for the occasion:

Pulled aside for an interview with NBC Sports Bay Area, Bell made it clear that those goggles weren’t for the kind of spray the Warriors had enjoyed in the visiting locker room at Quicken Loans Arena, because he was off that particular brand of drink:

The Warriors chose Bell with a second-round draft pick that they’d bought from the Chicago Bulls for $3.5 million, believing him to be the kind of mobile and versatile four-five who could develop into a quality supplement to what Draymond Green provides on the defensive end. Evidently, that similarity extends to trolling:

… before cutting off a fairly staid and normal interview to sprint away from both the microphone and his security detail to enjoy some time with a fan base that loves him more than just about any other Warrior in recent memory:

And yet, his shirt remained on, he didn’t scream about how everyone hated him, and he managed to avoid just taking drinks out of an open bottle of liquor handed to him by a random someone he didn’t know. Responsible? Yes. What we’re looking for here? Perhaps not.

“We just cut from a different cloth,” Green said by way of offering a non-politically-correct answer to how the Warriors pulled off their third title win in four years. “There’s a lot of guys in this league, they saw, we just cut from a different cloth. That’s all I really got for you […] We just ain’t cut the same. I told one of them dudes from the Cavs after the game. He tried to shake my hand. I said ‘Tristan, we ain’t cut the same.’”

For my money, Bell deserves the Parade MVP honors, but I wouldn’t fight you in a public square if you went another direction. The real winners, though: fans of any other NBA team who might have felt like they needed more reason to hate the Warriors. Next time you feel like you’re running empty, just take a gander back at this, and chances are you’ll find yourself full to burstin’ in no time flat … which, naturally, is just the way they like it.